


Pretender

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 03:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Storybrooke, Maine.<br/>They told him it wasn't real, over and over. They told him that his dad must have got lost in the storm that hit when they were camping. It was the shock, they said. The trauma of losing his father so soon after losing his mother. He wanted people to be to blame, because people could be punished. Storms were just storms, and you couldn't go after them, but people: you could find people and punish them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretender

**Author's Note:**

> So this unexpectedly walloped me across the head. Never expected that.

Storybrooke, Maine.

They told him it wasn't real, over and over. They told him that his dad must have got lost in the storm that hit when they were camping. It was the shock, they said. The trauma of losing his father so soon after losing his mother. He wanted people to be to blame, because people could be punished. Storms were just storms, and you couldn't go after them, but people: you could find people and punish them.

Owen knew they were wrong.

Storybrooke was real.

He remembered sitting in the diner. He remembered sleeping in the bed and breakfast. He remembered the Sheriff called Graham. He remembered the Mayor who was nice until she wasn't, who had them chased to the edge of town, who had his father imprisoned and dragged away, all so she could keep Owen like she had the right.

He remembered his dad yelling at him to run, and he remembered running, scared and alone, and into the woods. 

That's what you get when you camp in the boonies, dad said. 

It took him hours and hours to find someone to help him, a ranger station in the middle of nowhere. He told them, told them everything, and they got in the car and drove along the roads until they reached the rock that marked the edge of Storybrooke. There was nothing there. No one there. An empty road.

They didn't believe him.

No one believed him.

They bundled him up in the car, and the police picked him up from the ranger's station. His uncle came to collect him from the police to take him home. Search parties were sent out, even though Owen told them exactly where he was. They didn't listen. They just sent him to doctors and psychiatrists until he stopped talking about it.

But he didn't forget. He never forgot.

His cousins didn't ask him about it. They thought he was weird, that losing his mom and dad had messed with his brain, but it hadn't. Losing his mom was bad but losing his dad was much worse, because he knew his dad was still out there and alive, and he'd run and left him behind.

The nightmares woke him every night, even when he had stopped talking about it. He learned quickly how to keep it to himself, the blankets over his head, and every night, he promised himself and his father that he would find a way back, and he would make things right. 

He had a notebook that he kept hidden under his mattress. He had a map of Storybrooke all drawn out in as much detail as he could remember: the clock shop, the hardware store, the diner, the closed-up library, the Mayor's house, everything about it. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the streets clearly.

He even tried to draw the people, the ones he remembered. He had sketch after sketch of the Mayor, with her dark eyes and her dark hair and her smile. Some of them were drawn so hard that his pencil almost went through the paper. 

When the pages started yellowing and curling and the words and pictures started fading, he got a new notebook and drew it all again, all the details, all the lines, every picture. He stole one of his uncle's pens. 

It lasted longer, and when he woke in the night, and his cousin was still asleep, Owen would pull the book out from under his mattress and under the covers with him. He would switch on his torch and he would trace every street with his fingertips, right up to the road where they took his father from him. 

His aunt and uncle didn't say it to his face, but he knew they thought they'd taken in a crazy person. Sometimes when he walked into a room, they would stop talking and smile at him like they meant it. He pretended not to notice, just like he pretended Storybrooke, Maine wasn't real. He pretended and they pretended too, and he did what regular kids did: he went to school, he did his homework, he got okay grades, and he graduated.

The first thing he did when he didn't have to stay in school was drive north. 

His uncle was a good guy, but he refused to take Owen back to Maine. He said it was for his own good, that chasing a ghost was never going to help. They told him he had to let his father go, and he had looked at them and listened, and the first time they couldn't stop him, he drove to Maine to find his father.

He found the road. The boulder was right there, the one that marked the edge of the town. He remembered it. He remembered all of it.

He stood there, in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin, and yelled for his father. He yelled and yelled until his voice was hoarse and his throat was raw. Someone had to hear him. It felt like there was a whole world listening to him, and just like everyone else, they didn't hear a word he was saying. 

He drove his car further down the road, as far as he could, and when road became forest, he got out and he walked and walked. He had it all mapped out. He knew when he hit a clearing that he was standing where the main street had been. He wondered if they could see him, like a ghost, walking through streets that were hidden from the whole world, hidden from him. 

Maybe they couldn't see him either.

"Dad!" he called, turning on the spot. "Dad, I'm still looking! I promise!"

No one replied, and the rain was only getting heavier.

He made his way back to the car, wrapped himself in old blanket, and stared out into the dark.

He stayed there for as long as his supplies lasted, searching every part of the woods. They'd never found his dad's car, and he remembered demanding that if it had been the storm, then why didn't they find the car near the road? Where did it go? How could they explain it? None of them could. They just hid behind the storm, because they couldn't believe a town could vanish.

If a car could vanish and a man could vanished, why couldn't they believe that a town could vanish?

Trouble was that he couldn't spend his life searching the woods. If he was going to do that, he would need money for food and gas. If he needed money, he would need a job. If he didn't have either of those things, he'd be no use to anyone at all.

Owen was good at pretending. He'd learned how. 

So he went back out into the world that was full of pretenders, smiling and working and earning what he needed to, and whenever he could, whenever he had vacations, he would head back up north. His colleagues wondered why he liked Maine so much. He said it was the scenery. It stopped them asking too many questions.

He didn’t have many friends, really. 

It was easier to keep secrets if you didn’t have many friends.

There was one, and she knew his tale. She had seen the room plastered with news clippings, maps, drawings, anything and everything that would ensure that he would never forget. Magic was real and magic could make a town vanish. She indulged him, but she smiled almost the same sympathetic smile his aunt had smiled: the ‘you’re crazy, but you don’t know it’ smile.

Let her think that. Let the rest of the world think it.

He built his life, made it real, took a new name and hid little Owen behind the cheerful, amiable nature-loving Greg.

Owen would never forget.

No matter how long it took, he would find a way back to Storybrooke, Maine.


End file.
